A User's Guide to Make-Believe

by Jane Alexander

  She clenched her teeth. It wasn’t the first time. Could be any one of the neighbours – leaving food out to fester, dishes piled unwashed, takeaway cartons mouldering, living happily with an infestation that spread through the walls of the whole block – and it would take weeks and endless phone calls for the landlord to do anything about it. In the meantime, from under the sink, she fetched out the sticky papers left over from the last infestation. It was the hot spots they liked. Microwave, toaster, kettle. Hence, cockroach tea.

  On her screen, the ads had finished, replaced by the wallpaper pic of her nephew and niece. Next door, her neighbour had changed the radio station: back-to-back hardcore, urgent and shrill as a panic attack, 200 beats per minute hammering at a wall so shoddy that sound passed through as if through nothing at all. And yet there was space inside for life, for insect-specks to crawl, and breed, and spread.

  First in her head, then out loud, she practised a new phrase.

  I enjoyed last night … I had a nice time last night … I had a really nice time with you …

  Made a new choice, an easy choice; spun the contacts in her screen, and called quick as blinking.

  ‘Lewis?’ She smiled. Heard how it warmed her voice. ‘Yeah, me too … a really nice time.’

  CHAPTER SIX

  It was the thought of his flat that had drawn her – his big, clean, comfortable flat – as much as his bed, his hand on her hip, his warmth against her back. Though when he’d suggested coming to hers she’d almost agreed, just to see his face, see him bite down hard on his dismay: the bleakly functional estate, the single shop with its permanent steel shutters, the shared bathroom. But that might have made her resent him, and resentment was not what she wanted to feel.

  He met her with a well-judged kiss on the cheek, halfway between friends and bedmates.

  ‘Welcome back,’ he said. ‘Been a while.’

  ‘Twelve hours, at least. Wasn’t sure I’d recognise you.’

  He closed the door behind her. ‘So, have you eaten?’

  ‘I could be tempted.’

  ‘I hope so,’ he said. ‘But, have you eaten?’

  She narrowed her eyes at him, laughing; shook her head as he led her into the kitchen. He was different today – and she liked it. More direct; less complicated. She couldn’t imagine him saying a thing like I’m not ready.

  ‘Glad you’re amused,’ he said, ‘but that wasn’t the reaction I was going for.’

  ‘Laughing with you, Lewis. Not at you.’

  He shrugged. ‘It’s OK, I’ll survive. I was going to do pasta. Just linguine with blue cheese and walnuts, something like that?’

  Something like that. The last meal she’d cooked had been instant noodles and a slice of toast. ‘Yeah, that sounds good. Need any help?’

  ‘Just keep me company.’

  She watched him work at the counter, thinking how unexpected this all was. How quickly she’d come to feel at ease with him. On the way here, she had jolted her way over cratered tarmac, roads folded and cracked like something living was forcing its way to the surface of the city; turning onto a stretch of canal surfaced with green slime, broken only by plastic bags and shopping trolleys, she’d been greeted from every bench along the way by huddles of men drowning their dead time with party-sized bottles of cider, had passed under a bridge colonised by the local young team and taken a couple of direct hits from the stones they’d thrown before she could outdistance them. Then she had reached Lewis’s flat, and entered a calmer, kinder world. Late sun warming the notched wood of the table where she sat. The roll of boiling water, the cooking pasta smell, the steam glazing the windows and diffusing the light. It was all the more comforting because it was food being made for her by someone else. She couldn’t remember the last time anyone had cooked for her. Knew she shouldn’t get used to it, shouldn’t relax too much. But while she was here, she meant to enjoy it.

  Lewis was chopping stuff, his back to her. ‘So,’ he said, ‘how was your day at work? Where is it you work, by the way?’

  ‘The university – boring admin stuff, I – Jesus!’ Something thumped onto the table, coming from nowhere to land right beside her. Ginger fur. Fierce matching eyes.

  ‘Oh. Yeah. This is Pita. Didn’t you meet, last night?’

  ‘We did not.’ The cat settled into a crouch and a narrow glare. Uncomfortable, Cassie slid her gaze away. ‘Seriously, you called your cat Peter? It’s not a common feline name.’

  ‘No, Pee-tah. She’s a she.’

  ‘Right. Pita … like the bread? Because you do know that’s even weirder?’

  ‘Yeah, spelt like the bread, but that’s not why. It’s an acronym. Stands for Pain In The Arse.’

  ‘Wow, OK. Say what you feel.’ Cassie lifted a tentative hand, trying for a stroke. Judged, was how she felt. With her relentless stare, Pita seemed to know all, condemn all. The cat ducked, flicked an ear, backed abruptly out of its crouch and turned – presenting Cassie with a brief close-up of a puckered behind beneath a switching tail – before dropping heavily to the floor.

  ‘She’s usually friendlier,’ said Lewis, shifting his attention back to the food. He put the walnuts on to toast. Drained the pasta. Threw everything in a bowl, dug it all together and brought it to the table.

  ‘Olive oil,’ he said, depositing a sleek ceramic bottle. ‘Probably doesn’t need salt, because of the blue cheese, but … in case.’ A little matching bowl of flaky crystals. Two glasses of water.

  ‘Looks great. Smells great.’

  Lewis lifted his glass. ‘Cheers.’

  Water, because of her.

  ‘Look, you can drink if you want,’ she said. ‘I mean obviously you can, but – if you normally would. If you’re not, because of me.’

  He shrugged. ‘Sometimes I would. Not always. You don’t ever, I take it?’

  ‘Easier just to stop, completely. To be honest it’s not a big thing, not like you might think.’ She started to eat. ‘You know, some folk at the group – their recovery is like their child. Constantly needing to be protected, needing to be fed and nurtured. They can’t take their eyes off it. Whether it’s drink or drugs it’s no different; it’s always going to be the central thing in their lives.’

  ‘But for you it’s not like that?’

  ‘Not with drinking, not at all. That was only ever a displacement for me, I didn’t ever need it in that physical way. I wanted the blackouts, the blanks, I wanted the way it cut me off from real life – but the sickness, the hangovers—’ She pulled a face. Opiates had been a more satisfactory substitute for Make-Believe, but hard to come by. Alcohol, though … She’d never craved that first drink of the day, had to force it down like medicine, like punishment. It wasn’t much of a temptation these days when she caught the smell drifting from pub doorways – though she tended still to hold her breath, and turn her face away.

  ‘I’d feel a real fraud going along to the meetings,’ she said, ‘if that was all it was. Sometimes I feel like a fraud anyway – like, was it really an addiction? But then I remember. How it crept up on me. I mean, right from the start I was using it every day – but it was part of my job, you know? Research, getting to know the product, testing for glitches. Or when it was recreational, it was just like watching TV or reading a book, only better. Although, I don’t know about you but sometimes I did choose TV or a book instead – if I was really tired and just wanted someone to tell me a story. I didn’t want to have to make my own.’ Lewis was nodding in agreement. ‘Not that it was about stories, really. It’s more sensations, isn’t it? Or moments. Intense moments.’

  ‘Sounds like you were just a normal user …’

  ‘Although, it was amazing how quickly two hours would shoot past. But then what happened was … I don’t know, I suddenly got better at it. At imagining. All those hours of practice, maybe. And once that happened, the whole thing was more absorbing. Harder to keep away from. It was like The Wizard of Oz, you know when everything’s black and white and then sudde
nly it’s in colour? That’s what it felt like, real life versus Make-Believe.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That’s exactly it. That’s exactly what it was like.’ They were quiet for a moment. Then: ‘It’s easier for us, in a way,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t matter that we’re tempted every day of our lives. We can’t get back.’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Doesn’t feel easy, though, does it.’ He was lifting pasta onto his fork, letting it slide back to the plate.

  ‘That’s our own central thing, I guess. You not hungry?’

  He looked up. ‘I read something interesting today, about Make-Believe. Hang on. I’ll show you.’ He got up to fetch his screen from the counter, sat tapping with one hand, twirling linguine with the other. ‘It was in my news feed … somewhere … hang on – yeah, here we go. Imagen just released their latest user numbers. What do you think they showed?’

  Cassie frowned. ‘Usual, I’d guess. Up twenty per cent, something like that?’

  Lewis spun the screen so Cassie could see it. ‘According to this, they’ve actually lost subscribers over the last quarter. They’re still up on the same period last year, but compared to the previous quarter – I mean it’s not drastic, it’s something like half a per cent – but still …’

  She scanned the text. There wasn’t much more than what Lewis had said. The stats had been announced late in the day, and it would be hours before the web responded with the inevitable slew of argument and analysis: tech commentators claiming they’d predicted a slow down; finance journalists presenting speculation as fact; privacy campaigners denouncing the sale of neurological data; and the Campaign for Real Life spinning the drop as the beginning of the end for Make-Believe.

  ‘Still,’ she said, ‘when you’re expecting growth in double figures, that’s pretty major.’

  ‘See here, in the last paragraph …’ He pointed. ‘The spokesman’s quoted as saying it’s part of their sustained expansion plan … always aiming for a period of consolidation, etcetera.’

  She found the text: glanced up, saw the question on his face.

  ‘Nope. I mean unless their plans have changed completely since my time.’

  ‘And how likely is that?’

  Cassie shook her head. Returned to the report. It was accompanied by a stock shot of the chief exec, Eric; he’d been carefully positioned in front of the Make-Believe logo that illuminated the Imagen office reception. She knew he would have spent fifteen minutes adjusting the knot in his tie, and then made a show of impatience when the photographer directed him towards a flattering angle. ‘They have sidelined things before,’ she said, distracted. ‘Areas of development, I mean. Like way back, there was a whole capacity they were developing for some kind of therapeutic use, but I think it wasn’t profitable or something. Before my time, anyway.’ She flipped the screen back round to Lewis. ‘But I can’t see why they’d deliberately cut growth like that. There was never any “period of consolidation” in the strategy, specially not consolidation that involves losing subscribers – which, cutting through the bullshit, is actually retrenchment.’

  ‘So – what could it be?’

  ‘Who knows? All I can tell you is that it’s not my problem.’ She pushed her plate away. ‘I can’t finish this, sorry, I wish I could cos it’s really, really good.’

  ‘Save it for breakfast?’

  She gave him a raised-eyebrows look.

  ‘But hang on,’ he said, ‘let’s not get distracted. I mean, yes – let’s – but not yet. Do you think there could be something – connected to us? To what happened to us?’

  She could feel the food solid and comforting in her stomach, but her plate was still within picking distance. She reached for a crumb of walnut. ‘Like how?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know, just – I suppose I was thinking if there are more of us—’

  ‘More addicts …’

  ‘Yeah – then, could that be the reason?’

  ‘You mean they’re not losing subscribers, exactly; they’re cutting them off?’ Cassie stared at him. ‘A half per cent drop against expected growth of twenty per cent? That’s a lot of people. That’s—’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t know how many, but for the sake of argument – five hundred? A thousand? Is it even possible that so many people would be able to do what you did?’

  Lewis smiled. ‘I am, obviously, a technical genius – but yeah, that’s just about possible. The real barrier would be keeping ahead of the tech team at Imagen. So the hack I built, they’ll have fixed that loophole now, but that doesn’t mean there’s not another way. There’s bound to be another way.’

  He was leaning forward, eyes wider than she’d thought they could go. Without meaning to, Cassie did the opposite, leaning back in her chair.

  ‘OK,’ she said, ‘so maybe that’s it.’

  ‘But that’s got to be important. Don’t you think?’

  ‘How? I don’t see it.’

  ‘Because … it could mean it wasn’t us; we weren’t to blame. If there are more of us, enough of us – it could mean Make-Believe is inherently addictive. It’s unsafe or – or insufficiently regulated. We could sue!’

  She felt herself closing up, pulling back. He must have seen it in her face.

  ‘What? What have I said?’

  For a moment she couldn’t speak. That resentment rearing up again. What did he have to sue for? What had he lost? He had his home, his career, his future – he didn’t understand. Because she hadn’t explained. There was stuff she couldn’t, wouldn’t, stuff she still nursed deep inside, and he didn’t need the details. But he needed to know how lucky he was.

  She took a drink of water.

  ‘Listen,’ she said. And she told him.

  Make-Believe: the last time she’d seen that glowing logo. Moving dreamlike through the lobby, detached from everything, uncertain what was happening. They were sending her home – but she wasn’t ill. Not ill, just tired. So tired. The security guards, Dave holding her left arm, Justin holding her right, marching her through the exit, round to the car park. Waiting for her to drive away, but she couldn’t start the car, couldn’t see straight, wasn’t safe, so they called her a cab and waited right there till it came to take her away.

  The buzzer waking her from a dead sleep that had lasted a day, a night, and into a second day. Three of them standing at her door: two of them company directors – Leanne, HR, and Xav, operations – and the third a lawyer. They sat down on her sofa, on her chairs, and spoke without meeting her eyes, like they’d never known her. Spoke about what would happen if she didn’t sign the papers the lawyer pulled from her briefcase. Sign here. And your name, and the date. Again: here, and here. Still too tired, too fuzzy to understand. Her brain pulsing against her skull, and every cell crying out for the world to re-arrange itself into something soft, warm, kind.

  Later – a week, two weeks – reading the papers again, and understanding this time. What they were taking from her. It is hereby agreed as follows … She would not work again in emerging technologies. She would not contact her former colleagues. She would not communicate with anyone about Make-Believe, and Imagen. Without prejudice to any other rights or remedies that either Party may have, the Employee acknowledges and agrees that: Damages would not be an adequate remedy for a breach of any of the provisions of this agreement; Imagen Research and any other relevant subsidiary company of Imagen Research shall be entitled to the remedies of injunction, specific performance and any other equitable relief for any threatened or actual breach of the provisions of this Agreement by the Employee; No proof of special damages shall be necessary for the enforcement of this Agreement.

  Her bonuses reclaimed for the whole of the year, her last month’s salary forfeited. Understanding now, and knowing – though she didn’t tell him this – that she deserved it. Just like no one would feel sorry for a junkie who stole from her family, no one should feel sorry for her. Ask her sister; ask Meg. Cassie deserved it all, and more. Deserved to fall behind on her re
nt, to be forced to borrow at extortionate rates from any rip-off lender that would oblige, and then to lose her flat anyway. To end up in a bedsit on the edge of the city, a three-bed ex-council flat chopped into four and infested with roaches.

  And none of this came close to what she’d really lost.

  When she’d finished she got up, went to the sink to refill her water glass. Drained it in one.

  ‘And you,’ she said, pointing her glass at him, ‘you still have everything you ever had. So – sorry, but I don’t see what the hell you have to sue for.’

  For a moment he was silent. She saw him decide to say something, saw him change his mind. His face, his jaw looked tight, but when he did speak his voice was calm. ‘I get that,’ he said. ‘You’re right. On paper, you’re right. But come on, Cassie. We don’t live on paper. There’s stuff I’ve lost too, not like you maybe, but – OK, here’s how I think of it. It’s not about money. It’s not about compensation. It’s about power. Right? If we had something over them, like if we knew something they’d prefer people not to know – something we could prove – then, we could negotiate.’

  ‘Negotiate – for what?’

  ‘What do you want? They took your future. Don’t you want that back?’

  She said nothing. Held tight onto her empty glass.

  He glanced down. Rubbed at a smear of something on the table, kept rubbing once it had vanished. ‘They’d have to let us back,’ he said.

  In her chest, something suddenly too big, pushing up against her breastbone, into her throat. That was it. What this was about; what he was about.